For much of 2012, a large section of the print and broadcast media in Sri Lanka behaved like the proverbial chicken who panicked himself and the rest of the jungle claiming the sky was falling.
They uncritically and sometimes gleefully peddled the completely unsubstantiated and imaginary prophecies of doom and gloom – specifically, about the world ending on 21 December 2012.
And just like Chicken Little did, our media too had plenty of uncritical followers – a case of the blind leading the blind. They worked themselves into a misplaced frenzy, imagining all sorts of scenarios for the world’s end.
In this week’s Ravaya column (in Sinhala), I take a critical look at our uncritical and fear-mongering media, especially broadcast media. Appears in print issue of 30 Dec 2012.
In this week’s Sunday column, published in Ravaya newspaper of 25 March 2012, I
return to take another critical look at the hype and hysteria surrounding the world ‘ending’ in December 2012.
Last week’s column elicited several reader responses online and offline. While many agreed with my rational reasoning, some were miffed by my puncturing their inflated obsession! A few challenged me to provide an assurance that there won’t be any major disasters in 2012 — we were NOT talking about random disasters, but a planetary scale one which qualifies as End of the World.
This week, we look at how certain environmentalists are linking global warming and 2012 world ending myth, adding to existing public confusion about climate change. I cite as an example of this green alarmism a highly distorted article Sinhala published by Practical Action Sri Lanka, a usually moderate and sensible development organisation. Its country director admits it was an ill-advised public outreach effort.
I also refer to a recent scientific analysis that probed whether highly destructive large-scale earthquakes in the past few years, in countries bordering the Pacific and Indian oceans, indicate an increased global risk of these deadly events. Its conclusion: there is no such evidence.
In this week’s Sunday column, published in Ravaya newspaper of 18 March 2012, I take a critical look at the mounting hype and hysteria about the world ending in December 2012.
The Wikipedia describes the ‘2012 phenomenon’ as comprising a range of eschatological beliefs according to which cataclysmic or transformative events will occur on 21 December 2012. In reality, it’s a blockbuster Hollywood movie, rather than any ancient prophecy, that triggered this wave of public concern!
ලෝක විනාශ මිථ්යාවක් මතු වූ ප්රථම වතාව මෙය නොවෙයි. එහෙත් මෙතරම් ලෝක ව්යාප්ත මට්ටමින් මෙබඳු මුලාවක් හා භීතියක් මෙවර හට ගත්තේ ජනමාධ්ය හා තොරතුරු තාක්ෂණය හරහා මේ ප්රබන්ධය අති විශාල ජනකායක් අතරට ඉක්මනින් පැතිරුණු නිසයි. තොරතුරු සමාජය හා මාධ්ය චර්යාව ගැන නෙත් යොමා සිටින මට මේ ගැන නිරීක්ෂණ හා අත්දැකීම් කිහිපයක් තිබෙනවා.
Open Minds! 